Featured Dashboard summary December 2017

...interesting analysis...I suppose also the Prime's low cost sweet spot might make it more available to middle America folks who might be depending on the tax credits

 

You would think so, but the dealers don't seem to really want to sell them to middle america. The prime is probably great for those California traffic jams.

 

i think he meant lower incomes?

 

me, for one

 

@bwilson4web
Ready to start the January 2018 dashboard thread?

Numbers rolling in today...Model 3 is finally rocketing ahead. Just getting started, it seems. #1 January 2018:


Monthly Plug-In Sales Scorecard

 

Wow. Bolt sales down so much. I haven't dissected the rest of the pack, but that one jumped out at me. Yes, the fear that credits would be eliminated must have played a large role in overall reduced numbers of January as they also spurred sales in December.

 

yes I was trying to say middle income levels...not so much the part of USA between Left and Right coasts

 

i agree. prime has a price point after credits and discounts and rebates that fit a large cross section of budgets.

 

This is normal sales trends with the tax credits. The sales spike in December as people want the car for that's years tax credits. Then sales tank in January. The credits just make it so people that would have bought another car in Jan push up their buy to Dec.

 

This, but we also need to compare to January 2017. Still a lot of vehicles to report which should be up by the end of the day today. If we don’t have at least 10% growth from January 2017, this would be a weak January. We will know soon.

 

I don't think January of last year, which was a blow out January, need to be beat this year for a big increase in plug-in sales in 2018. Plug-ins need a good march and I would expect it to be a blow out month of nearly December of 2017 numbers. January has so much seasonality, and the model 3 and 2018 leaf will make it look even worse compared to the rest of the year.

Keys will be

Can tesla get production up of model 3, and if they pass 200,000 units before april. My guess is model 3 production is still suspect, but they will have it worked out by june, and will stay under 200,000 units cumulative through march to keep the tax credit for an extra 3 months.

Will the 40 kwh leaf be a big seller? I have doubts about that. I think it will outpace the leaf from last year, but not do as well as the bolt.

Will the clarity phev and prime grow phev, or simply take sales away from the volt, ford energis, and bmw phevs? I really don't know this. I expect much higher growth in the US bev market than phev.

 

Sometimes low number of sales are due to supply of a particular vehicle even though the demand was there.

 

so true.

 

I'm no expert, just trying to make sense of the data, but the data doesn't read to me as Jan 2017 as a blow out. Jan, Feb, and Mar in 2017 were up about he same percent year over year, so this was not isolated to Jan 2017. Jan 2017 also was held back by Prime not meeting demand yet and Bolt not warmed up enough. Agree, there is much Model 3>>Leaf 40kWh demand waiting to be met, many (Model 3) pre-orders waiting to be filled, so this seems the biggest factor to have created a vacuum in Jan 2018.

I would bet March 2017 and forward will be a big jump over corresponding 2016 months.

With Model 3 and Leaf gen 2, it seems the BEV/PHEV Hybrid ratio should easily set a record.

 

With all the numbers and estimates in, it appears that plug ins grew 10.1% compared to january a year ago to 12,116.

I'm looking at plug-in data 2017 versus 2016
January +77%
Feb +59%
March +34%

Plug-ins were up 26% for the year.

I agree with all of this. My guess is plug-ins in the US will be up over 35% to 270,000+ vehicles in 2018.

Tesla has sold approximately 165,000 bevs in the US so far (last 4 months are only estimates), it sold about 10,000 in febuary and march last year. Theoretically they may sell only 35,000 bevs in the US in the next 5 months if model 3 production is not going well. They sold about 20,000 vehicles in the period last year. That would give them the full tax credit through the end of 2018, and about a 66% increase from the first half of 2017. If they can produce 10,000 model 3s in march though, and get it to a run of 20,000/month then the full credit would expire at the end of september, with half tax credit in the last quarter of the year. If that is the case I would expect 170,000+ tesla model 3s alone to sell in 2018 in the US, for reference the best selling plug-in last year was the model S with 27060 units.

GM has sold 170,777 plug-ins so far. They will have full tax credits all year. Nissan is far behind in 3rd.

 

And the only ones advertising plug-ins on TV around here are Honda, Mitsubishi and Porsche.

 

i'm not seeing anything, but that didn't stop me from buying one.

 

I stand corrected.

I quickly looked at total monthly sales gains of each of those 3 months, curiously all about 4600-4800 more units year over year. The actual relative sales increase, as you pointed out, is significantly different as vehicles sales improve throughout the quarter making the relative difference of 4600-4800 vehicles less as one heads into March.